About Building Hamlet, you Ω me.

Trained as an architect and urban designer I worked for about 20 years on different scales and topics. During my professional career I continued beeing interested in educational setti ngs, groupprojects as well as individual coaching of students in architecture.

Since my focus, as a father of two growing-up sons, on football more than 10 years since, from september 2001 onwards, and the actual training/coaching experience I gained, plans rose to combine my fascination for architecture and building within the educational settings of (primary) schools. Whatever training is involved, steps from start to finish, are molded within a conceptual model, with attitude beeing the part that deserves the most attention in the presence of a teacher.

The 'aldea building hamlet 4 learning environments' is not just a 'literary' link to Shakespeare's drama Hamlet. It proposes practical exercises to train day to day virtues in very concrete and tactile forms. With the help of ABΩ blox self-constructed environments in all classes (1-8) will stimulate intertwined spatial conciousness and imagination, two authentic virtues young children devellop naturally during early years. 

In higher classes exercises will be provided as outside school enterprises, directed to transform  school environment into a learning network neighbourhood. By using spatial and social characteristic values of local and specific quality. Once the schools population, children, teachers, board and parents with nannies&grannies get toghether learning knows no limits. Older people can add the time and experience to deepen the learning network. And the global is always just around the corner. 

The reference to Hamlet the Prince: "to be or not to be, that is the question...". In his struggle to act within a corrupt world and yet maintain his moral integrity, Hamlet ultimately reflects the fate of all human beeings (http://www.enotes.com/hamlet). talking about navigational skills.

To serve our purpose we ad the positive to this most quoted syllable in literature: "to be positive or not to be at all .... And for the pessimist and cynical among us, it will work with 'negative', to be negative or not to be....., as well. Many critics have spoken and written about Hamlet and Shakespeare. To quote one of them, T.S Eliot, saying that we should from time to time change our ways of beeing wrong, because about one as great as Shakespeare one can never be right. Eliot considered the play Hamlet as an artistic failure, on a subject William Shakespeare could not transform in drama.

Lets be wrong for another moment in time, and take Hamlet the prince and play for 1600-renaissance man, as a 'dialogue interieur', to transit modern men into 21 century. What virtues do we need? What problems are new, which are old, and which are wornout?

Our world has shrinked and magnified, on microscopic and macro scale. But no less corrupt since 1600. To deal with all this, what size can an average human beeing upload, should we not focus on what is dear to us (Hamlet does but he is harsh) what we want to nurture, what is close. There the nurture assumption might be of help, yes we are raised 75% by environmental influences, spatial, social, personal. And for our genetic preferences, milieu too is the nurturer. Without stimuli from outside, our brain will definitely extinct.

The virtues young adolecents need, once adult educators are critically questioned, can be trained in daily exercises during young age. Then of course these exercises should be playfull, serious and precise. So football training creates a framework of daily routines, becoming attitude in less then 3 months, and not so talented players will anchor gains in their character. Like Aristotle said: virtue of character comes out of habit. And he talked about the strong virtues; braveness, sacrifice, honesty,..... 

Our goal is to bring the common virtues around in daily exerciseable forms, and while we practice we will make a lot of fun, learn math and language, and improve our skills in beta and alpha, and that might even satisfy the yoga in us. Or in most cases it will nurture our 'borough', our hamlet of things and people in relation to one another and our -common- self.

Guido Keizer

februari 2007 - december 2012